I know doctoral students over here who have had to say goodbye their husbands/wives because they don't make the minimum salary - and also academics who earn many times over the limit, but because it's freelance and not an annual guaranteed salary, have to watch their families be evicted from the country.

Without going into the details of the Immigration Bill (I genuinely don't know what it contains or if there's a need for it's contents). Politically, surely the most daft thing you could do is post an image like that on twitter of all places.

Theresa May: "I am also clear that we need to make sense of our human rights laws and remove the many layers of appeals available to foreign nationals we want to deport."

Strange, since our human rights laws make a lot of sense when you don't get your information about them from the tabloids. I'm guessing that "make sense of" here actually means "take a hatchet to", probably involving abandoning the European Convention on Human Rights.

which (if it passes) will "allow police to disperse people taking part in a lawful assembly and arrest those that did not comply. There is no need for the demonstration to have been disorderly or violent – the only requirement would be that the dispersal was ‘necessary to reduce the likelihood of anti-social behaviour’."

There is a conflation (stirred up by the Guardian, Hope Not Hate etc) that these vans are attacking immigrants. They're not, they're attacking *illegal* immigrants. A very obvious and important difference.

Are these people suggesting we allow people to break the law? Because that's a pretty dangerous position to hold.

For the rest of us, the purpose is to confront illegal activity. It would be no different to a van driving around showing the number of drug dealers caught in the area. The posters are attacking criminals, not races.

If the Guardian ran with this, more truthful, line then there wouldn't be a problem.

"Ministers were threatened with court action by two clients of the Refugee and Migrant Forum of East London, who argued the rhetoric on the vans breached the government's duties on equality... the government has accepted it would in future need to have "due regard" to its duties under the Equalities Act, including the need to eliminate discrimination and harassment based on race and religion, as well as to foster good relations between people from different racial and religious groups."

All this article says is that the Government will have to run a consultation before the campaign gets extended (if that's what they intend to do based on their experience of the trial). There's nothing to say they *can't* extend the campaign or that the vans aren't allowed on the road because of the Equalities Act.

a) illegal immigration is a serious problem - it isn't really, in the grand scheme of things that are a serious problem in the UK, and
b) the idea that these vans will actually help enforce the law. They won't.

I know you're trolling and playing the part of a simple-and-literal-minded person who doesn't get sub-text, but these boards weren't aimed at offenders at all. As mentioned, the idea was to set the Tory party up as the party with which anti-immigration (whether illegal or legal) xenophobes can identify in the wake of the surge in UKIP support.

Any glance at the comments under an article in the Daily Mail, or Express or the like would tell you that this is who the vans are aimed at, and unsurprisingly (being as though its target is those often with a poor grasp of subtlety and sub-text) it seems to be working.

You have no evidence for the claims you're making. I'm not sure why you're desperate for this to be about something it isn't. You have a prejudiced narrative in your mind, and will bend things to fit it regardless of the facts. Quite why, i'm not sure.

It might seem like a very simple request to deal with but there may also be, for example, confidentiality issues constraining what they can tell you about their staff. and they may have to figure out a way of answering your request without breaching that or a way of justifying why they can't respond. I mean does 'level of seniority' mean pay grade or exact job title or line management position?

I know you said you don't expect a response to the third point but there's no way they can reasonably respond to that in the form of an FOI request. You've just given your opinion on the tone employed by their pr team!

They're not difficult questions to answer. I purposely haven't asked for anything identifying individuals and information relating to staff grades is generally disclosable.

I'd have just said:

Q.1 - The person who administers our Twitter account is at grade X, job title X.
Q.2 - Their tweets are monitored and vetted by a person at grade X, job title X.
Q.3 - Not recorded information (could offer a comment if PR team wanted to)

And if they wanted to clarify what I mean by 'level of seniority' they could have dropped me a quick email at any point during the last six weeks.

living here as a failed asylum seeker or even just as an asylum seeker awaiting a decision is fucking awful. you're not allowed access to any public funds yet you're not allowed to work or contribute lawfully to society. however, a lot of asylum seekers come here precisely because as shit as being on asylum support is (and it's degradingly shit) it's usually a lot better than where you felt you had to leave. however, for those who are just here illegally i am not sure it's so relevant. if they can fly under the radar and make ends meet then a voluntary return just looks like a free plane ride home!

disclaimer: none of this should be read as me condoning their methods of publicising assisted voluntary returns.